Adding some color to an uncharacteristically overgrown patch of land in tidy Mill Basin
This is the hood ornament of a Soviet-made 1958 Волга ГАЗ-21 (Volga GAZ-21). Here's a shot of the whole car, and here's one of the dashboard (note the Cyrillic characters).
This 7,000-square-foot monstrosity, with its "cruise-ship-meets-mob-mansion" aesthetic, was built by Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, a former underboss of the Lucchese crime family. (Casso subsequently had the house's architect murdered, fearing the man knew too much about his illegal activities.)
The Turano family (a mother and her two gynecologist sons) later took up residence here, purchasing and extensively renovating the house (hey, somebody had to repair the holes punched in the walls by FBI agents looking for bodies) with a boatload of dirty money from their intimate companion Carl Kruger, a currently imprisoned former state senator who spent much of his time with them here in "the most unconventional of domestic arrangements — at once public and opaque, widely whispered about and poorly understood."
This is the street entrance to the walled-off waterfront patio at the Gaspipe-Turano-Kruger house. You can see an aerial image of the house and patio here.
This is one of a few pedestrian passages that cut across the streets of Mill Basin, some more charming than others.
I think they may have been out of use for a while, but they certainly looked a lot better before Hurricane Sandy hit.
This is a delivery vehicle for the Mill Basin Deli, honoree of New York State Senate Resolution J576-2011.
